Reba McEntire Was Supposed to Be on That Plane: The Tragedy That Happened 35 Years Ago Today

On March 16, 1991, Reba McEntire lost seven members of her band, her road manager, and two pilots in a plane crash in the mountains just north of the Mexican border near San Diego. She was not on the plane. She has spent the 35 years since living with that fact.

McEntire had just performed a private concert for IBM employees in San Diego the night before. Her band boarded a Hawker Siddeley 748 charter plane for the flight back, climbing into the San Jacinto Mountains in the dark at approximately 1:50 a.m. before flying directly into a cliff at 8,600 feet. There were no survivors. The National Transportation Safety Board later attributed the crash to controlled flight into terrain — the pilots simply didn't see the mountain until it was too late.

The musicians who died were among McEntire's closest friends and collaborators. She had built her band carefully over years, and several had been with her for nearly a decade. Her road manager Jim Hammon, who had been by her side since the beginning of her career, was also killed.

'Live Every Day Like It's Your Last'

McEntire later wrote in her autobiography that the crash shattered her in a way she had never experienced. She struggled with survivor's guilt for years — the randomness of who was on that plane and who wasn't was something she could never fully make peace with. She dedicated her 1991 album For My Broken Heart, released later that year, entirely to the victims. It became one of the best-selling albums of her career.